Electrical Performance of a Piezo-inductive Device for Energy Harvesting with Low-Frequency Vibrations

Electrical Performance of a Piezo-inductive Device for Energy Harvesting with Low-Frequency Vibrations

WoS Article

This study presents the experimental evaluation of a piezo-inductive mechanical system for applications of energy harvesting with low-frequency vibrations. The piezo-inductive vibration energy harvester (PI-VEH) device is composed of a voice coil motor (VCM) extracted from a hard disk drive. The proposed design allows the integration of different element types as beams and masses. The dynamic excitations in the system produce a pendular motion carried out by a hybrid arm (rigid-flexible) that generates energy with the rotations (with a coil) and the beam strains (with a piezoelectric material). The electrical assessment was performed through different working modes classified as inductive, inductive with magnetic instabilities, and piezo-inductive. The instabilities in the harvester refer to external forces induced by two magnets that repel each other. The first two inductive configurations were designed as a function of three parameters (length, mass, instability angle) to debug these using the maximum output voltage. The selected experiments were conducted in a piezo-inductive configuration. The results showed two effects on the output voltage-the first one is related to a system without resonances (higher broadband), and the second effect is associated with a multi-resonant system. As a final conclusion, it is pointed out that the electrical performance can be improved with the magnetic instabilities since these considerably amplified the output voltages.

This study presents the experimental evaluation of a piezo-inductive mechanical system for applications of energy harvesting with low-frequency vibrations. The piezo-inductive vibration energy harvester (PI-VEH) device is composed of a voice coil motor (VCM) extracted from a hard disk drive. The proposed design allows the integration of different element types as beams and masses. The dynamic excitations in the system produce a pendular motion carried out by a hybrid arm (rigid-flexible) that generates energy with the rotations (with a coil) and the beam strains (with a piezoelectric material). The electrical assessment was performed through different working modes classified as inductive, inductive with magnetic instabilities, and piezo-inductive. The instabilities in the harvester refer to external forces induced by two magnets that repel each other. The first two inductive configurations were designed as a function of three parameters (length, mass, instability angle) to debug these using the maximum output voltage. The selected experiments were conducted in a piezo-inductive configuration. The results showed two effects on the output voltage-the first one is related to a system without resonances (higher broadband), and the second effect is associated with a multi-resonant system. As a final conclusion, it is pointed out that the electrical performance can be improved with the magnetic instabilities since these considerably amplified the output voltages.

energy harvesting; piezo-inductive energy harvester; vibration energy harvester; vibration power; power scavenging

energy harvesting; piezo-inductive energy harvester; vibration energy harvester; vibration power; power scavenging

VARGAS, C.; TINOCO, H.A..

2021

16.07.2019

MDPI

BASEL

2076-0825

Actuators

8

3

Swiss Confederation

55

69

14

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0825/8/3/55

http://hdl.handle.net/11012/189009

actuators-08-00055